Yellow Cake + Chocolate Frosting

Today, July 15, is my blog's 4th birthday - time for cake!   In his book The Modern Baker,  Nick Malgieri has a recipe he calls the "Perfect Birthday Cake" - yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  That just so happens to be my favorite combination, a perfect way to celebrate my blogoversary.

n.o.e.'s notes:

-  Some talented and dedicated bakers have been baking their way through Nick Malgieri's book as part of an effort called the Modern Baker Challenge.  I have, on rare occasions, joined them.  This post is my contribution to the cake section of the Challenge.  I started this blog in response to a different baking challenge - weekly baking of every recipe in Dorie Greenspan and her book, Baking From My Home to Yours with the original Tuesdays With Dorie group.  The Modern Baker Challenge has given me a fun opportunity to dip, however sporadically, into another baking challenge.  The Modern Bakers do not post the recipes, so if you'd like to bake this cake, you'll have to find a copy of the book!  It has come out in paperback, so you can pick it up for a reasonable price.

-  Although I'm posting this cake in honor of my 4th blogoversary, I actually baked it for my book group's 6th anniversary.  Hence the "6" candle you can see in the picture below.

-  I baked 1/2 recipe in my 6" cake pans.  I ended up with layers that were quite petite.

-  Because there was so little batter in the small pans, the cake baked very quickly.  In fact, I probably over-baked it by just the tiniest bit, which was totally annoying.

-  The cake layers had firm structure and a fine, close crumb.  There were some mysterious "swiss cheese" type holes in the cake but I have no idea why they were there.

-  You can see from the frosting how my layers weren't totally level.  I didn't want to trim them because the layers were already so small.  So I just turned the top layer upside down, leaving a flat top and bottom, but a sizeable gap in the side, which I filled with frosting.

-  Nick's Perfect Birthday Cake combines yellow layers with a fudgy ganache frosting.  

the verdict:

I was very surprised by this cake.  It could not have been more different from the standard yellow box cakes of my previous baking life.  The layers were improbably soft and tender, despite a possible minute too long in oven.  The cake was light but not dense, dry but not sawdusty.  The intense ganache frosting was a perfect complement.  It took me until my second slice to figure out that I loved the cake!

Fluted Polenta Ricotta Cake

 One thing I've learned from nearly 4 years of baking Dorie Greenspan's recipes weekly, and that is that I can trust her instincts.  Dorie can turn the most unusual combination of ingredients into the most sublime of baked goods.  I've seen it time and again, and this week's recipe, the Fluted Polenta Ricotta Cake, gave me an opportunity experiment in the kitchen again with Dorie.  I've gathered that here were a lot of bakers who were not fans of this cake when it was baked by the Tuesdays With Dorie group four years ago but it sounded good to me so I was interested to see how we would like it.

n.o.e.'s notes:

-  The cake was selected four years ago by Caitlin of the blog Engineer Baker, and you can find the recipe on her cake post. 

-  The recipe calls for dried figs (the seeds add to the crunch provided by the medium grind cornmeal/polenta, but I went a different direction and added chopped prunes.

-  I baked a half recipe in 8" fluted tart pan.

-  This recipe produced a definitely pourable cake batter, but it thickened nicely as it baked, and the butter pats left little light patches all over the surface of the cake.

-  I served the cake with honey-sweetened yogurt.

the verdict:

This is a rustic, homey cake, not a show-off special-occasion fancy-dress cake.  My husband and I loved it; his observation was, "this cake is a perfect balance: not too sweet, nice taste of honey, substantial texture."   Although the prunes were fine in the cake, we both agreed that it would be perfect with dates; I will make it that way next time (which might just be right away!)

Lemon Loaf

 

There's one thing to be said for the Lemon Loaf cake that was assigned for this week's recipe by the Tuesdays With Dorie; Baking With Julia baking group: it's really easy. Really, really easy.  I arrived home very late on this rainy Tuesday afternoon and stood in my kitchen debating with myself whether I had time to bake this cake.  Or more importantly, whether there would be enough daylight after the cake was baked to photograph it so that I could actually post it on time.  When I saw how short the recipe is, I started pulling out ingredients and before I knew it, the cake was in the oven.  And was baked, cooled (mostly) and sliced in time to photograph in natural light on the back deck, thanks in just a small measure to Daylight Savings Time.

n.o.e.'s notes:

-  You can find the recipe for the Lemon Loaf on the blogs of this week's hosts:

Truc of Treats and Michelle of The Beauty of Life

-  The virtue of this recipe is that it is made in a bowl with a whisk; no mixer or creaming of butter required.  Instead, the butter is melted and folded into the cake batter at the end.

-  I baked 1/2 recipe, in a little skinny loaf pan that my daughter JDE brought back from her 2011 trip to Hong Kong.

-  All of the lemon flavor of the recipe is from lemon zest.  I wanted that zest to contribute its lemony limits, so I used a favorite Dorie Greenspan tip: first I rubbed the zest into the sugar with my fingers, until the sugar was a bit damp and very fragrant.  Then I whisked the sugar/zest mixture with the salt and eggs as directed by the recipe.

-  I deviated a tiny bit from the recipe by adding a healthy dose of lemon oil to the batter (about 1/2 teaspoon for my half recipe).

the verdict:

This had a wonderfully dense, moist crumb, but wasn't in the least bit heavy or dull.  The lemon flavor was subtle, but noticeable (in part from the lemon oil I'm guessing).  It made a wonderful dessert with some sliced strawberries.  This is a great recipe to keep bookmarked for those occasions where you need a not-fussy, quick, easily transportable cake.  Although I kept mine plain, the cake could easily be gussied up by adding a lemon glaze or soaking it with a lemon syrup.

Almost Fudge Gateau

This week my blog will feature a Tuesdays With Dorie dark-chocolate one-two punch.  Today's post is the recipe chosen by the group four years ago, Almost Fudge Gateau, and on Tuesday we'll have Chocolate Tarts for the new Tuesdays With Dorie - Baking With Julia group.

n.o.e.'s notes:

-  The founder of Tuesdays With Dorie, Laurie, featured the gateau recipe on her blog four years ago, here.

-  I baked 3/4 recipe in an 8" springform pan.

-  The cake's generous quantity of eggs are separated and the yolks are combined with melted chocolate and butter, then with flour.  Finally, the egg whites are whipped and folded into the chocolate mixture, then it's all baked until puffed and set.

-  Dorie gives an optional chocolate glaze for the cake, but I decided to dust the top with powdered sugar and call it a day.

the verdict:

Although I suspected that the cake would be good with ice cream or whipped cream, I was lazy and served it to my book group straight up.  And nobody complained!  There were plenty of smiles on the faces of my tasters, as we all enjoyed the trufflish, fluffy-yet-dense cake. It's deep and dark in flavor, rich rather than sugary.  I thought that an overnight in the fridge improved it, as it usually does with chocolate cakes, by making the texture fudgier.

All in all, this was a lovely cake, if not the very best chocolate cake in the book.  My favorite one-layer chocolate cakes from TWD:
16 Minute Magic, Chocolate Almond Torte
and
Chocolate Grand Marnier Cake

Leslie of Lethally Delicious baked this cake, complete with the glaze, and it's stunning.
[If you are also playing catch-up with the old TWD recipes and baked this cake this week, let me know and I will add your link here]

Black and White Chocolate Layer Cake

Dorie Greenspan's book Baking From My Home to Yours includes several Big Cakes, as it should.  Those time-and-equipment-intensive layer cakes, each composed of multiple different elements, alternately inspire and terrify me.  If this were just an average book on my shelf, I might select one of these layer cakes if I had something that I wanted to celebrate (with cake) and I had the time at my disposal to bake it.

In the course of baking through the entire cookbook as part of the Tuesdays With Dorie baking group, with recipes announced monthly as assignments for the group, however, these cake recipes periodically popped up like little landmines. Boom - a cake recipe was chosen, and suddenly I would find myself scrambling around for a layer cake occasion and meshing the cake's steps and my schedule.

It's a little easier now that I'm catching up on the recipes that I missed from the early days before I was a TWD member, and posting them in the original order, because I know which recipes are coming and when.  I have a list of all the recipes and the original posting dates [which you can see on my Tuesdays With Dorie page] so now I can plan ahead to fit baked good to appropriate event.  The Black and White Chocolate Cake was chosen as the TWD baking assignment four years ago today, and I prepared a mini version several weeks ago for my book group meeting.

n.o.e.'s notes:

-  The founder of TWD, Laurie of the blog Slush, posted the recipe on her blog in February, 2008.

-  I baked a half recipe in two 6" cake pans.  The cake layers are a vanilla buttermilk, and the cake is filled with a dark chocolate mousse and frosted with a white chocolate whipped cream.

-  I measure my ingredients by weight whenever possible, and I know that Dorie's cup of all purpose flour is 4.8 ounces or 136 grams.  This recipe calls for cake flour, though, and I had no idea how much to use by weight.  Internet sources varied wildly on weight of 1 cup of cake flour, anywhere from 3.5 oz to 4.25 oz.  I went with the heaviest because Dorie uses a "heavy cup" for regular flour (4.75 oz).  Also that's what it came out to when I double checked the measurement with my measuring cup.

-  There was no buttermilk in my fridge, so I used pourable yogurt from Traderspoint Creamery for my cake batter. (Nope, they don't pay me to mention their product, same with any brand I mention on my blog.)

-  In the cake batter I also used some wonderful duck eggs from my farm box.

-   For the white chocolate, I used a mixture of Callebaut and Ghiradelli.

-   For the dark chocolate, I used a mixture of 61% el Rey and 72% Trader Joe's.

-   This recipe used 8 bowls, 4 sauce pans, 2 cake pans, 1 cookie sheet, 1 cooling rack, 2 sieves, 4 silicone scrapers, an arsenal of table knives, 2 measuring cups, a knife, and assorted measuring spoons. To be fair, some of the bowls were prep bowls where I pre-measured ingredients, but this was a sink-ful of dishes for a little cake!

-  Constructing a cake with even layers, frosting it neatly and cutting it cleanly so that the filling doesn't smear into the layers is beyond my ability, but it must be possible because the picture of the cake slice in the book is absolute perfection!

the verdict:

The cake was well-received at my book group, but in this after-holidays time of year, most of the members were limiting carbs, or limiting sweets, or on diets, so the pieces they cut from the cake were mighty small.  I ended up with a good bit left over, and I can report that it keeps extremely well in the fridge.  Because it is not sugary-sweet, it is great any time of day, and makes for a lovely breakfast in a pinch.

The cake layers are tender and moist with a charming touch of vanilla.  The chocolate pastry cream was fantastic as a slightly-bitter filling, and the whipped cream frosting provided a creamy sweetness and just a hint of white chocolate flavor.

With this cake, I've finished all of the layer cakes in Dorie's book.  Here are my posts from the others:
Perfect Party Cake
Devil's Food "Wite Out" Cake (the "Cover Cake")
Chocolate Caramel Chestnut Cake (variations)
Cocoa Buttermilk Birthday Cake
Bill's Half-Sized Carrot Cake

Dorie's Lemon Pound Cake

The actual name of recipe is Perfection Pound Cake, from Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home to Yours, and it was baked by the  Tuesdays With Dorie baking group four years ago this week.  I wasn't a member of the TWD group then, and now that the group has finished baking through the book I am catching up on the ones I missed by baking the recipes chosen early in the group's history.

"Perfection" in the title of the recipe sets a mighty high bar.  Going into my baking session I was dubious.  Not because I don't trust Dorie's recipes; I do.  If I were to bet that anyone could make an extravagant claim for a baking recipe and prove it to be true, my money would be on Dorie.  But I had read some accounts of this cake from various bakers over the years, and reports indicated that the cake tended to turn out "dry."  That's a common hazard for a pound cake.

I've been to enough Southern funerals to have tasted a goodly number of pound cakes.  Many are dry, to be sure, but I have garnered some outstanding pound cake recipes.  My absolute favorite comes from the cookbook put together by my children's elementary school as a fundraiser.  I haven't blogged that one, and I now realize that I need to remedy that.

The day I baked this cake I stood in front of my mixing bowl and contemplated added a little something to the cake batter to ensure that it wouldn't turn out dry - a dollop of sour cream or yogurt sounded like a good plan to me, but I squelched that thought and baked Dorie's recipe as she wrote it.  I wanted to know if it really is perfection!

n.o.e.'s notes:

-  You can find the recipe for this cake on Michelle (now the Brown Eyed Baker)'s old blog, here.

-  I cut the recipe in half and stuck right to the recipe.  I couldn't resist having some fun, though, and used a cute little silicone pan that I had bought at IKEA back in the fall.

-  Dorie gives the option for a lemon variation, and that's what I chose.  I figured that lemon would give the cake a boost in case it fell short of perfection.  To adapt the recipe from the basic pound cake, rub grated lemon zest into the granulated sugar with your fingertips before adding the sugar to the butter.

-  My little cake rose nicely and developed that signature pound cake crack on the top.  It was so small and cute - like a little muffin pound cake.  I think I might have left it in the oven a minute too long.

the verdict:

Well, I have to be honest here: my cake did not rise to the lofty heights of perfection.  But it was a good pound cake.  My tasters and I enjoyed the lemon flavor and the fact that it wasn't overly sugary (which can happen in a pound cake.)  Was it dry you ask? My answer is: I don't think so.  This was an issue of some discussion with my tasters and we couldn't quite decide if it was dry.  But at the same time it was not what I'd call a moist cake.  I think if I had taken it out of the oven a minute or two earlier it would have been better.  As it was the cake paired nicely with strawberries, and if I'd had any whipped cream on hand it would have been nearly perfection!

[note: my friend Leslie of Lethally Delicious is baking on the same TWD catch-up schedule and your can read her opinion of the pound cake on her post.]

Galette des Rois for Epiphany

January 6, the twelfth day after Christmas, is the feast day of the Epiphany, which in Western Christian tradition commemorates the visit of the Three Kings to the infant Jesus in Bethlehem. I have always loved celebrating Epiphany. When my girls were small, we would all dress up in finery for our Epiphany dinner and I decorated the table with scattered glittering "jewels" and candles in golden crown-shaped holders. Based on some holiday books, I baked a cake or cupcakes with one piece of colorful candy tucked inside; the person lucky enough to find that candy would be crowned with a fancy paper crown and be the monarch for the rest of the day.

I'd never really heard of any specific traditional type of cake, though, so I was excited to see a post on Nick Malgieri's blog last January for a Galette des Rois, or traditional King Cake from France. I promised myself that I'd try it the next time Epiphany rolled around. Last week got a little busy, however, and I missed baking the galette for the actual date of Epiphany. Luckily, from what I gather from French sources, the Galette des Rois Season lasts through most of the month of January, so it wasn't too late to enjoy the galette when I baked it on Sunday.

According to French custom the galette is typically baked with a fève, a dried bean or trinket, inside. The person who finds the fève in his or his the piece of galette receives a paper crown and becomes king or queen for the day, and in some circles, has to provide the cake for the next Epiphany celebration. Apparently the French bakeries have gotten quite elaborate these days and the fèves are often lovely little porcelain figurines.


n.o.e.'s notes:

- For my first galette des rois I followed the Nick Malgieri recipe.

- Instead of attempting homemade puff pastry (maybe some day!) I used the duFour brand of store-bought all-butter puff pastry. This comes in 14 oz packages, just over half the size of the 1.5 pounds of puff pastry called for in the recipe. I cut the sheet of puff pastry in half, rolled each half into a square, and cut circles approximately 9 inches in diameter from each square. I made 2/3 recipe of the filling (very easy math, and it used half a can of almond paste - I froze the other half for a future recipe) and had a bit left over after filling the galette.

- My fève was a dried cherry.

- This galette had a traditional almond cream filling flavored with vanilla and kirsch. I reduced the amount of sugar in the filling by just a bit.

- Next time I'll be more careful when scoring the puff pastry and make sure that the knife cuts to an even depth in the pastry so that the cuts will open in a regular pattern as the galette bakes. This, my first galette was a lovely golden brown and it was beautiful to me despite the random way the scoring turned out!

- Here are some galette des rois links:

- Dorie Greenspan's latest blog post talks about glaettes des rois and other types of galettes enjoyed by the French.

- Some pretty -and apparently tasty - galettes des rois from Paris bakeries can be found here.

- A step-by-step guide to homemade galette des rois was posted by Clotilde on her beautiful blog Chocolate and Zucchini. I didn't find her post until after I had baked my galette but I will definitely use it as a guide the next time I bake this treat, as it contains some fantastic tips for forming and baking the galette.

the verdict:

The galette presents a simple - and very delicious - combination of flavors, buttery crisp crust and creamy almond filling. I had fun baking this galette des rois, sampling it, and sharing it with a few neighbor families. The galette des rois is destined to become an Epiphany (or at least January) tradition in my kitchen.

{TWD} Soft Chocolate Cakes

When I baked these back in November I didn't think to photograph them in a holiday setting. The clip art holly sprigs add a festive touch, don't you think?

We're within a week of Christmas so the top brass at Tuesdays With Dorie headquarters have given us TWD bakers a bit of a break from our normal routine. Instead of baking an assigned recipe, we have a "rewind" week: we each choose a recipe from Dorie Greenspan's book Baking; From My Home to Yours that we did not bake at the time the recipe was originally chosen for the group (or revisit an old favorite recipe).

There are a couple dozen recipes that were chosen in the early days of TWD, before I joined the group. I've been very slowly trying to bake some of those recipes on my own, so that I can - eventually - say that I've baked every single recipe in the book. Such is the case with Dorie's Gooey Chocolate Cakes, which I baked in early November when I was stuck at home waiting for repair people and it was chilly and gray outside: perfect baking conditions!

n.o.e.'s notes:

- This recipe is Dorie's take on the craze for molten/lava chocolate cakes. You can find the recipe on this blog post from the early days of TWD on the blog Lemon Tartlet.

- I made 1/2 recipe and used silicone mini cake pans, similar to these. Because the pans were silicone, I didn't need to butter or flour the pans, and after they were baked the cakes slipped right out.

- The timing is critical in this recipe. Because the cakes are supposed to end up being liquid in the center, doneness tests don't work. You have to use your timer and trust that it will all come out correctly. In my case, however, the cakes didn't end up molten. I was baking in a different oven from my usual, so it might run a bit hot, or I might have baked a minute or two too long.

- Although my cakes were not totally molten in the middle, they were soft. I served them with whipped cream, which melted into the warm cake in a most appetizing fashion.


the verdict:

These were perfectly portioned little cakes, and even if they weren't exactly gooey inside, they were soft-ish and quite good. This recipe is ideal for instant-gratification: the cakes are not too difficult to put together, have a short baking time, and are designed to be eaten hot. Win, win, win!

Helen's Sour Cream Bundt Cake

Here it is, November 15, National Bundt Day, and she's been at it again.

the "she": Mary, the Food Librarian
the "it": 30 Days of Bundt Cakes

For three years running she has celebrated National Bundt Day by baking a different bundt cake for each of the 30 days leading up to November 15. Nothing makes Mary happier than a good bundt cake; in fact her theme for her baking spree is "I Like Big Bundts." Mary has hinted that this is her last year of bundtish extravaganza, but somehow I see the tradition continuing.

In a much more modest form of celebration, each year I have joined Mary by baking one bundt cake and posting it on November 15. Last year I baked an apple triple ginger streusel bundt cake, which you can see here, and my bundt from two years ago was a spiced cake made with blackberry jam, which I posted here.

For 2011 I wanted to bake an unusual and cool bundt cake. I needed to look no farther than the blog Whitehaven, an interiors blog of my friend Helen and her business partner who have an interior design business. For Whitehaven's one year blogiversary, Helen posted the recipe for this cake. Voila! This would be my contribution to National Bundt Day.

Helen is one of the members of my wonderful book group, and I actually baked the cake for a book group dinner hosted by Helen and her husband - she got a kick out of someone else baking her cake and serving it at her house!

- Scroll down to the bottom of this post for the recipe, or click over to Whitehaven's blog for the cake recipe and lots of beautiful design posts. My favorite: the House of the Week feature - it's always fun to see which house near or far is highlighted each week.

- The method for mixing this cake is somewhat unusual. The egg yolks are added to the batter first and the whites are separately beaten and folded into the batter at the end. I used some fabulous huge duck eggs from my farm box.

- Did you know that the bundt pan is an American descendant of European kugelhopf pans? I used 10-cup kugelhopf pan. I found out that this is a seriously big cake - it rises a lot as it bakes, even if you think you might have over-folded the batter. Mine rose above the rim of the pan but luckily it did not overflow. I'm guessing that a 12-cup pan would probably be perfect.

- As it bakes, the cake makes the most wonderful crunchy sugary crust.

the verdict:

This is a perfect special-occasion cake, striking in appearance with a light texture and delicate flavor from the vanilla and lemon juice. The cake is close-crumbed and moist, and looks a bit like a pound cake, but it is not a bit dense or heavy. In fact, it is almost fluffy inside. I'm guessing that the tight crumb comes from the slow oven.


Mary will post a round up on her blog of all those who celebrate National Bundt Day, so check her blog for that post in late November; there are sure to be some great recipes. In the meantime, you can find Mary's previous bundt posts:

2011 I Like Big Bundts (30 different Bundt cakes)

and her Bundt Cake page, which includes, among other things:

2010 I Like Big Bundts (30 different Bundt cakes)
2010 Round up of Bundts (86 people made Bundts for National Bundt Day)

2009 I Like Big Bundts (30 different Bundt cakes)
2009 Round up of Bundts (41 people made Bundt cakes to celebrate National Bundt Day)

Also, here's a blog post by cake goddess Rose Levy Beranbaum's about bundt cake pans, complete with some pretty terrific bundt cake tips.

Happy National Bundt Day!

the recipe:

Helen's Sour Cream Cake

2 sticks butter
3 cups sugar
6 eggs, separated
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 cup sour cream
3 cups plain sifted flour
2 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla

Cream butter and sugar.

Add egg yolks, one a time, beating well after each addition.

Mix soda into sour cream.

Add flour to butter, sugar, egg mixture, alternating with sour cream then add flavoring.

Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites.

Pour into well greased and floured 12-cup bundt pan. Bake one and a half hours (90 minutes) at 300 degrees.

{TWD} Far Breton ~and~ Honey Nut Scones

The baking group Tuesdays With Dorie began on January 1, 2008, and each week it has presented members with one assigned recipe from Dorie Greenspan's book Baking: From My Home to Yours. Right now we are *this* close to finishing the book, and the group's leaders have decided that we should finish by the end of Calendar Year 2011, making the group exactly 4 years in duration. In order to meet this deadline, we have to double up on weekly recipes for most weeks this month, leaving Thanksgiving week free for us to choose a recipe we might have missed. So there's a lot of baking going on in my kitchen, and each Tuesday's post in November will have not one, but two recipes.

This week's recipes are Far Breton and Honey Nut Scones.

Part 1: Far Breton

n.o.e.'s notes:

- Nicole of Cookies on Friday chose Far Breton, and you can find the recipe on her post.

- Far Breton is a regional dish from Brittany, containing prunes. Apparently the word "far" mean "flour" in Breton, but the batter for this cake is quite egg-centric with very little flour at all.

- I made 1/2 recipe in 6"x3" round cake pan.

- Instead of white sugar, I used granulated golden palm sugar, and duck egg rather than chicken eggs.

- The recipe calls for prunes and raisins, although Dorie gives permission for other dried fruit substitutions. I stuck with the prunes and raisins, cutting the prunes in half before soaking the fruit in very strong black tea. The recipe specifies Early Grey, but I didn't have any (I rooted through the entire tea drawer not once but twice to prove that to myself.) Another option is to infuse the fruit with Armagnac, but I've never been able to locate it in the liquor stores in my hamlet.

- The far puffed a lot as it cooked, and browned beautifully. It took a good hour to bake, even at half the size.

- When I unmolded the far, it fell considerably, like a souffle.


the verdict:

The far was squarely in the delightful no-man's-land between custard and cake, like a baked custard with enough flour added to edge it toward cake territory. Both my husband and I loved the finished product. It was eggy and dense and sweet and fruity. After its long soak in strong tea, the dried fruit was tender and nearly melted away into the custard. We found the far at perfect at room temperature as an after-dinner dessert, and nearly as good, chilled, for breakfast the next morning.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Part 2: Honey Nut Scones

n.o.e.'s notes:

- The scones recipe was chosen by my baking buddy Jeannette of The Whimsical Cupcake.

- I stuck closely to Dorie's recipe, with the exception of using I used pecans instead of walnuts.

- Dorie's method for forming scones produces small, individual scones. I prefer a bigger scone with more "inside" and less "outside", so here's how I baked these: After mixing the dough I patted it into a disk in a greased glass cake pan, scored the disk into 6 or 8 wedges with a bench scraper, then baked. When the scones are still hot from the oven, I cut them into separate wedges along the score lines. To me the scones don’t end up dried-out this way.

the verdict:

These scones were a welcome sight for Saturday morning breakfast. And for Sunday and Monday as well! I'm more used to fruit than nuts in a scone, but I really liked the crunch and that the nuts lend to this recipe. This was one of my favorite scone recipes in the book.

{TWD} Apple Walnut Muffin Cake

It's October, and even here in the sunny, hot Southland, we can actually say that autumn has arrived. And what goes hand in hand with cool weather? Baked goods with apples, of course! This week's assignment for the Tuesdays With Dorie baking group is Apple Nut Muffin Cake, a very timely selection.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- This week's recipe was chosen by Katrina of Baking and Boys - click over to her post to find the recipe.

- Anything baked with apples is likely to be popular at my house, so I made an extra-big batch of this cake: 1.5 recipe in 4 muffin-sized loaf pans and one larger square pan. I bought this pan a year ago when I was in London - I love the very square corners and the removable bottom, which makes releasing the cake from the pan an absolute breeze.

- The recipe does have lots of ingredients, but it's not a difficult cake, since the preparation consists mostly in measuring. The method is simple and uses two bowls, a whisk and a spatula to combine the ingredients to make the cake batter.

- I had every intention of following the recipe - really I did - but as I went along, I made a few changes here and there. To start with, I used freshly ground whole wheat flour for 1/3 of the flour.

- To reduce the glycemic load, I cut the sugar by 1/3, and used palm sugar rather than white granulated sugar.

- The recipe calls for apple cider or apple juice. I used a mixture of King Arthur boiled cider and apple juice.

- I used chopped walnuts for the nuts, and to amplify the walnut flavor I substituted walnut oil for 1/3 of the oil in the recipe.

- I added a bit more salt, but next time I would increase the salt even a bit more.

- I'm not sure what kind of apples went into my cake - they were an unidentified variety from my farm box. I cut a bit more than the recipe specified.


the verdict:

Warm from the oven, the cake's texture was soft and the flavors blended beautifully. The pieces of chopped apple provided bursts of flavor. I would add a touch of nutmeg next time.

We enjoyed this cake for breakfast with salted butter. In fact, this cake was on the breakfast menu for a week, and it only improved with time.

{TWD} Date-Nut Loaf

The Tuesdays With Dorie bakers have been baking a lot of cakes with brown sugar in recent weeks. We had the Pecan Brown Sugar Bundt Cake and the Blueberry Brown Sugar Plain Cake. And now, the Date-Nut Loaf, which is actually a brown sugar cake with dates and nuts added. I'm not complaining, however, because these cakes are wonderful: the brown sugar gives a touch of caramel flavor.

Date nut loaves are such an old-fashioned treat; something about the combination of the dates and the nuts is both reassuring and rewarding. I knew that my husband is a fan of date nut breads, so I planned to bake a whole loaf hoping that he would consume most of it.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- This week's recipe was chosen by my funny and creative baking buddy Mary of Popsicles and Sandy Feet. If you don't know her blog, click over there for the date loaf recipe and stay to read about all of the fun she has with her family in her kitchen.

- Dorie's recipe specifies plump, soft dates. I had a full container of dates in my dried fruit stash, but they were hard and dry. I reconstituted them by soaking them in a mixture of boiling water and rum for an hour or so.

- For a quarter of the flour, instead of all-purpose flour I used freshly milled hard red wheat flour. I talked about my mill on this post on my bread blog, and I must say that fresh whole grain gives breads an amazingly complex nutty flavor.

- I used dark brown sugar rather than the light stuff specified in the recipe because I always do. What's better than brown sugar flavor than more brown sugar flavor?

- What could be more perfect for such an old-school cake flavor than a vintage loaf pan? I baked this cake in my long slim pan. Truth be told, I bake all loaf cakes in that pan, but it felt especially appropriate for this recipe.

- In addition to buttering and flouring the pan, I lined the bottom with parchment. Side note: did you know that you can wash off parchment and use it again? It is impregnated with silicone, so it has no problem doing a bit of time in the dishwater. [updated 6/22/11 to clarify: you can wash the parchment in a sink of soapy water, but I wouldn't try an actual dishwasher]


the verdict:

This cake had wonderfully caramelized edges, thanks to the brown sugar. Even though I had used a substantial percentage of whole grain flour, the loaf was light, moist and with the unmistakeable sweet date taste. My husband loved this one, eating it for dessert with rum ice cream the first two evenings, then switched to toasting it with butter for the next several days. We both agreed that it made delectable toast. There is no doubt that this recipe will be a repeat in my kitchen, and sooner rather than later. Thanks, Mary, for a great pick!

{TWD} Blueberry Brown Sugar Plain Cake

Perhaps the best part of summer is the return of fresh berries (optimally, local) at affordable prices. I love eating them by the bowlful and handful, but I try to save some for baking also. The bakers of Tuesdays With Dorie got a chance to bake with berries this week; the assigned recipe is Dorie Greenspan's Blueberry Brown Sugar Plain Cake.

It's tempting to doctor this cake up a bit, adding a streusel topping or a glaze, but that would defeat the whole purpose of it being a "plain" cake. I mean, it's right there in the title! It's a quick and easy cake, provided that your ingredients are at room temperature, and I wanted to test it the way Dorie intended it to be. Besides, how plain can a cake really be that boasts both blueberries and brown sugar?

n.o.e.'s notes:

- The recipe for this cake is on this post on the blog Everyday Insanity, by Cindy

- The cake is supposed to be baked in a 7x11 pan. I do have that size pyrex baking dish, and it's pretty rare that I get to use it for baked goods, but I like square cakes, so I used my 8x8 metal pan with a removable bottom. A closer fit would probably have been a 9x9 pan, but I wanted a taller cake.

- I think I truthfully can say I made this one "as written" - absolutely the only thing I changed was the spice component, which was optional. Rather than the 1/2 tsp of cinnamon, I added 1 tsp of ground ginger.

- Including a pint of blueberries made for a high ratio of berries/batter. I gave some thought to dredging the blueberries in flour before folding them into the batter so they wouldn't drop to the bottom of the cake as it baked, but instead I succumbed to laziness. I didn't want to use another clean bowl, and I was hopeful that the batter was thick enough to support the berries without sinkage.

- My cake pan is dark and non-stick, so I decreased the temperature to 360 degrees instead of 375. The cake was in the oven for 40 minutes, and I let it cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before removing it from the pan via the removable pan bottom.

- As I learned when I cut into the cake, the berries had indeed sunk to the bottom.

the verdict:

This cake may have "plain" in the title, but that doesn't mean it's boring or bland. Or unpopular. My tasters all loved this one, and piece after piece disappeared from the serving plate. I enjoyed the texture and the flavor from the brown sugar, but I was wishing that my blueberries were not those sweet, cultivated ones. To me, the intense flavor burst from tiny wild blueberries would have been better in this cake. My tasters were unconvinced; they liked the cake just as is.

[TWD} Pecan Brown Sugar Bundt Cake

Being one among a couple of hundred members of the Tuesdays With Dorie baking group has shown me the seemingly infinite variation among bakers, particularly when it comes to recipes preferred by the group's members. Case in point: the recipe that appealed to me most when I first opened my copy of Dorie Greenspan 's Baking: From My Home to Yours - the Swedish Visiting Cake - was still available for me to choose when my hosting turn rolled around, more than 2 years after the group started. Another example: when my daughter JDE bought Dorie's book three years ago, the Brown Sugar Bundt Cake was one of the first recipes she baked, but it wasn't chosen for the group until this week; more than 150 recipes were chosen ahead of it!

A testament to the quality and depth of this book is that these recipes that we are baking in the group's final year, far from being "dregs," are producing some of the tastiest baked goods to date!

n.o.e.'s notes:

- Peggy, of the blog Pantry Revisited, is this week's hostess; you can find the recipe on her blog post. I love reading Peggy's blog because she is always cooking up something fun in her kitchen. Besides, we Southern bloggers need to stick together, right?

- JDE joined me in the kitchen and we baked the bundt together. We made half recipe in a small pudding mold/tube cake pan.

- As written, the recipe calls for adding pieces of pear and chopped prunes to the batter. The ever-helpful Dorie suggests that apples would be a good substitute for the pears and any kind of dried fruit could stand in for prunes. Dorie gives a further option for making a nutty brown sugar bundt cake, and because I love pecans with brown sugar I decided to go that direction and bake a super-pecan bundt. I used King Arthur Flour's Pecan Meal in place of some of the all-purpose flour, substituted 2 oz of pecan oil (which I had bought a couple of months ago when I visited B&B Pecans in Fairhope, AL) for 2 oz of the butter, and stirred in a generous handful of deeply-toasted pecans (also from B&B Pecans). I also added some teensy currants. The flavorings were almond and vanilla extracts.

- The brown sugar I used was pretty dark, but I'm never one to object to a more intense brown sugar flavor.

- The cake crumbled when I sliced it, but I think that might be because I cut into it before it was completely cooled. It definitely was not a dry cake.

the verdict:

This cake was delicious, very moist and nutty with a distinctive flavor of brown sugar. I thought it was great plain but I certainly wouldn't argue with a little whipped cream on top. As much as we enjoyed it the first evening, warm from the oven - and we did enjoy it, each of us going back for second helpings! - it was even better the next day when the flavors had a chance to settle and combine. The pecan version was delicious, but I'm betting the cake would be equally good with walnuts and walnut oil.

Mama's Angel Food Cake for Mother's Day

From the title of this post, you'd be justified in assuming that I baked my mother's recipe for angel food cake. But you'd be mistaken - or more accurately, misled. This cake is from Virginia Willis' own Mama, and knowing what a great baker Virginia is, I was excited to try her mother's recipe: Mama's Angel Food Cake.

I baked it in the angel food cake pan that was my own mother's, and her mother's before that. All in all, it seemed a perfect way to celebrate Mother's Day!

n.o.e.'s notes:

- You can find the recipe here -

- Angel food cake is a great way to use up a lot of egg whites. The recipe calls for 12 whites; I always have extra egg whites from all of the ice cream that I make (ice cream base usually uses yolks) For this cake I pulled a bunch of egg whites out of the freezer. I used 360 total grams of egg white (my general rule of thumb is that each egg white weighs 30 grams)

- The accompanying Bourbon Creme Anglaise - recipe here - on the other hand, uses yolks only. I didn't want to orphan more whites than absolutely necessary, so I made half recipe (3 yolks) of the creme anglaise. It turned out to be plenty for the whole cake.

- The cake directions are clear and the cake came together exactly as described.

- Angel food cakes are baked in ungreased pans, presumably so that the cake can cling to the sides as it rises. My America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook gives a great hint to line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper. My grandmother's pan has a decorative ridged bottom, however, so I couldn't put parchment there. I was a little nervous about whether the cake would release after it baked.

- In addition to the ridges on the bottom, my grandmother's cake pan has faceted sides and is shallower than many other angel food cake pans. I suspected that it might not hold a full recipe of cake batter, so I had a small loaf pan handy for possible leftover batter. I ended up putting nearly two cups of cake batter into the loaf pan.

- As the cake baked, it rose and filled the pan completely. Once the cake comes out of the oven it is supposed to cool in the pan - in an inverted position - for approximately two hours. One way to keep the pan inverted is to rest the pan on a wine bottle. The center post of my cake pan was not the right size to fit around a wine bottle. But the post was about an inch taller than the rest of the pan, so I could balance the pan upside down on my counter, with none of the cake touching the counter.

- When the time came to unmold the cake, I loosened the cake's edges with a plastic knife and held my breath. The cake did release, but the browned edges of the cake stayed in the pan. It was still quite pretty to me, with its snow white crumb showing. I'm wondering if I should grease the bottom of the pan the next time I bake this cake.

the verdict:

I served the cake at a family Kentucky Derby/Mother's Day gathering. All nine of us loved it! It was definitely the best angel food cake that any of us had ever tasted. There was no hint of dryness in this cake; it was impossibly tender, soft and moist, with the most delicate vanilla flavor. I loved seeing the little vanilla beans speckling the cake's crumb.

The creme anglaise was a perfect complement to the cake, with just a whisper of bourbon (so appropriate for the Derby!) The combination was, as I said at the time, "swoon-worthy"! I've never really cared much about angel food cake, but this one had me coming back for seconds and looking forward to leftovers.

{TWD} Black & White Chocolate Peppermint Marble Loaf

Marble Cake. I was very excited that the Basic Marbled Loaf Cake was chosen as one of May's recipes for the Tuesdays With Dorie baking group. The best part about making a marbled cake: the marbling itself provides endless opportunities for amusement, entirely apart from the merits of the actual cake! It's fun to assemble the cake, but the real adventure comes after the cake is cooled. Then it's time to cut it and see the actual marbling pattern. Each slice shows a different design, so the fun continues until the cake is gone.

My first marbling experience was in the summerof 2008, the third recipe I baked after joining TWD. Learning cool new techniques and enjoying the delicious results has been the hallmark of my three years with the group. The only marbling I'd done in the meanwhile was a botched attempt at some marbled dinner rolls, so I was ready for another try.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- The recipe was chosen for the group this week by Carol from the blog The Bake More. Her marble cake post has the recipe, if you'd like to give it a swirl.

- Dorie sets up the recipe in a way that requires us to select a flavor/color combination. The basic recipe is just that: basic, and it gives no flavors. Instead, Dorie lists several possible choices, and encourages flavor experiments.

- So before I could even start to make this cake, I needed to choose flavors for my two halves of the batter. I was very very tempted to make Dorie's cardamom + coffee variation but I had already baked a marbled coffee loaf with my first TWD marbling experience.

- I love the look of a classic black and white marble loaf. But with all that leeway to play around I didn't want to bake a simple chocolate + vanilla version. I looked at the suggested variations and saw one for chocolate and peppermint. One half of the batter is made with bittersweet chocolate and the other half has both white chocolate and peppermint extract. I actually don't care for peppermint baked goods and also dislike white chocolate, so this gave me a moment's pause. But I was baking this for an eventual book group meeting and many people aren't as unreasonably picky about mint and/or white chocolate as I am. My buddy Mike baked this cake a few days before I did and his tweets raved about the delicious peppermint taste, so that sealed the deal for me. I had (unopened) peppermint extract in the cupboard and a lot of white chocolate on hand, so there was even more reason to choose that option!

- For the white chocolate/peppermint half of the batter, I used up a bunch of bits of white chocolate of various brands: Guittard, Ghiradelli, and Callebaut.

- My biggest objection to white chocolate is its cloying sweetness, so to make up for the extra sweetness from the white chocolate, I cut the quantity of sugar in the cake batter ever so slightly.

- I baked my loaf in my favorite vintage long slim loaf pan. I stumbled upon a cache of these pans and have sent them to several of my baking buddies. From what I hear, a number of them used their pans for this week's recipe.

- With this flavor variation, Dorie advises us to marble sparingly so that the peppermint flavor of the light batter doesn't get muddled with the dark flavor. I layered the two batters carefully and very gingerly sliced a knife through them.

- The loaf rose well in the oven, rising above the rim of the pan.

- My loaf seemed to take forever to bake, even in this thinner loaf pan, which is usually much quicker than regular pans. The light part of the cake kept testing liquid.

- I baked this cake just as I was heading out of town for a week, so once the cake cooled, I just sliced off the end and wrapped the rest and tucked it into the freezer.

the verdict:

It's always an adventure cutting into a marbled cake - you never know what patterns will emerge. In this case, because I marbled the cake so timidly, the resulting pattern wasn't very pretty.

I was surprised at how much I liked this cake. The white chocolate taste pretty much disappeared and the peppermint was present but not brash. The cake had a tight and even crumb. My biggest quibble is that the piece I sliced from the end was a bit dry. The flavor was excellent, though, and I'm hoping that when I pull it from the freezer we will find that the inner pieces of cake are moister. At any rate, it will be delicious with a mint ice cream or mint-infused whipped cream.

Carrot Cake for Easter

I recently acquired a vintage egg-shaped cake pan, made by Nordic Ware, and was dying to use it this Easter. The biggest question? Which recipe to use. My new Essential New York Times Cookbook, a labor of love (and talent!) by Amanda Hesser, has an intriguing recipe for a carrot cake that promises to be "light as cotton." Carrot cake - of the dense variety - is a huge favorite around here, so I thought I'd give the fluffy version a try. The cake's full name is Maria Tillman Jackson Roger's Carrot Cake, and with that moniker it just had to be great!

n.o.e.'s notes:

- You can find the recipe here, and, great news, it includes weight measurements as well as volume (the cookbook recipes are in volume only). Hesser made one change when she included the cake in the cookbook - she doubled the amount of cream cheese in the frosting while keeping all of the other ingredients the same. You end up with more frosting volume, and it is creamier and less sweet.

- The recipe yields three 9-inch cake layers. I was too lazy to measure the capacity of my egg pans, and, eyeballing it, decided to make half recipe of the cake. It turns out that the egg cake pans are bigger than they look, and the cake halves didn't rise all the way to the rims as they baked. As a result, my finished egg is a bit flat. I'm betting that 2/3 recipe would have been perfect, meaning that each of the two half eggs is equivalent to a 9" round layer.

- I did make a full recipe of the frosting because I had to frost the entire cake, including the bottom. It's hard to see in my pictures, but this is a three dimensional egg-shaped cake. (Would that be called an "ovoid solid"?) I had about 3/4 cup leftover frosting. I used the new frosting formulation from the cookbook, which doubled the cream cheese but kept the amount of sugar the same, instead of the frosting from how the recipe was originally published by the New York Times. (The original frosting is the one included in the recipe linked above)

- As I was frosting the cake I realized that I had not thought through a decoration plan for my Easter egg cake. Plain cream cheese frosting is fine for a layer cake, but a spiffy Easter egg should be a bit more festive. It was late at night, though, and I wasn't up to the challenge of tinting, piping, sprinkling or anything else. So on Easter morning I scattered some flowers from my herb garden over the cake platter and called it done.

the verdict:

While I'm not sure I'd call my cake "light as cotton," it had a moist, even crumb that was not the least bit heavy. There was none of the usual spice and added ingredients that are endemic to carrot cakes, but the chopped pecans gave a welcome textural boost.

My daughter thought it was not carrot cake-y enough, and my husband thought it "could use a bit more spice but was superb otherwise." For the next time, I'd probably add some cinnamon and nutmeg to the cake batter, and a pinch more sugar to the frosting.

{TWD} Cinnamon Swirl Sour Cream Bundt Cake

This week Dorie Greenspan made me feel old. In the headnotes for her Nutty, Chocolaty, Swirly Sour Cream Bundt Cake - this week's assignment for the Tuesdays With Dorie baking group - Dorie says:

"One of the nice things about having baked for so many yeears is being able to see sweets come into fashion, go out of fashion and come back again. That's the case with this sour cream cake. I saw it come into fashion in the 1970's..., fall out of favor and make a comeback recently."

Really? I clearly rememer this kind of cake and have baked it often throughout the years. In fact, I have a recipe for sour cream cake on a card in my metal recipe file box. Come to think of it that file box should make me feel old all by itself, I guess. But at any rate, I had no earthly idea that sour cream pound cake had become a dinosaur, or that anything so simple and good could go out of fashion.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- Jennifer of the blog Cooking for Comfort is responsible for choosing the bundt cake and you will find the recipe by clicking over to her blog.

- This cake was headed for the homeless shelter during Christmas week, on a platter with several different treats. I wanted the cake to have seasonal flavor so decided to emphasize the cinnamon. Here's how: I left out the dried fruit and the nuts in the swirl (both can be controversial in baked goods, and I wanted this to be of general appeal) and used cinnamon chips instead. So my swirl ingredients were 1/2 c brown sugar, 1/2 cup cinnamon chips and 2 tsp Vietnamese cinnamon.

- I baked a full recipe in a super-large decorative loaf pan that is equivalent in size to full bundt pan.

- Although the loaf pan I have is the same capacity as a bundt, it is much thicker (and shorter I guess, than a bundt would be if you stretched it out straight), so the cake takes a lot longer to bake. I'm pretty sure mine was a bit under-baked; in fact now that I look at the pictures again, I'm positive it was.

- Dorie says that it's fine if the batter doesn't close over the swirl when you put it in the pan. Now, I really hate to contradict Dorie, but you really do need to worry a little bit about covering up your swirl with cake batter. I was carefree about the whole issue and my batter didn't close up during baking. When I unmolded the cake and turned it right side up, all of the swirl fell out. I tried to stuff it back in but, really, there was no way it was going to stay there when the slices were served.

- I sliced the cake for the dessert platter and got a chance to taste the trimmed ends of the loaf.



the verdict:

Although sour cream cakes are classic for a (good) reason, I can't say that I remember the sour cream poundcakes of yore being this moist and fabulous. But Dorie's version is perfection itself, and when a cake is this good, it should never, ever go out of fashion.

Eggnog Cheesecake

Eggnog by itself, as a drink, is a fairly divisive substance. On one side is the majority vocal "eeewww" crowd and the smaller, but passionate "best thing ever" camp. My family falls pretty squarely in the second group; we love nothing better than a glass of eggnog, big or small, spiked or not, before or after meals.

Turning eggnog into baked goods gains it a bigger audience; I've made eggnog scones, eggnog cinnamon rolls, and when I saw Sunset Magazine's recipe for Eggnog Cheesecake, I knew it would be the perfect thing to bake for my daughter A.L.E.'s fiance, K., who was visiting our home during the Christmas holidays and who loves cheesecake.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- You can find the recipe here

- I made a half recipe into a mini cheesecake in a 6 inch springform pan.

- Rather than the graham cracker crust in the recipe, I substituted gingersnaps for a little spicy bite.

- This cheesecake uses a fair amount of nutmeg, so a microplane comes in very handy to grate the fresh nutmeg.

- I skipped the whipped cream on top.

the verdict:

This was a lovely, creamy cheesecake with a mild nutmeg-y eggnog flavor. K. enjoyed "his" cheesecake and generously let us help him polish it off!